Tiny Brilliant Suns
by Tharros
Summary: In which Uraraka wants Bakugou to cook for her, and Bakugou makes her work for it. (Kacchako Week 2018)


**A/N:** This is my first fic for Kacchako Week 2018! Day Zero Prompt: Rainy Days. Posting a smidge early because I'll be way too busy tomorrow. Hope you enjoy! The real week starts March 13th, so I hope to see you again then! (If not sooner with Two Black Dots!)

In case you didn't know already, I love these two dorks.

* * *

 **Tiny Brilliant Suns**

"What the fuck are you doing?"

The words slipped out of him the way they always did around her—easy, unintentional, and infuriating as hell because it made him look like he _cared_.

It was Sunday and he was making his way back to the dorms from a solo training session in Gym Gamma, umbrella cocked above his head and blocking the worst of the heavy summer rain. She, on the other hand, had no umbrella, and stood in the downpour like she was egging it on—face turned upward and padded fingers splayed at the sky. Pools of rainwater hung suspended in the air above her, and she continually added to them, drops splashing against pink pads and sliding off, but upwards as her Quirk took effect. Her hair was plastered to her rosy cheeks and her shorts and tank top clung to her and made Bakugou warm all over in a way that had nothing to do with the humid heat of May.

She grinned when she saw him, like she was actually _happy_ that he was there, and waved him closer.

And in spite of himself, Bakugou took a few more steps in her direction.

Magnetic.

It was really the only way to describe her. She was likeable, sure, and bubbly in the way that Ashido and the invisible girl (whose name, even after a year and a half, escaped him) were—'here-comes-the-sun,' Kirishima called it. But with Uraraka, there was more. A polar opposite ferocity that shook him and thrilled him and always left him wanting more.

If Bakugou believed in things like fairness, he would say that this was _not_. He didn't have a positive side, and he would never be the _whole_ that she deserved to attract.

Without invitation, Uraraka ducked under his umbrella, her body _almost_ pressing against his in the small space. She pushed her wet hair out of her eyes, still grinning as she looked out and up at her work.

"Practicing," she said brightly, in answer to his original question. "It's a good way to gradually raise the weight I'm lifting. This is better suited for upping my weight limit than going all out all at once, you know?"

"Sucks that it only works in shitty weather."

Uraraka shrugged, unfazed by his negativity. "Nah. It just makes bad days a little brighter."

He gave her his signature, derisive 'tch' and shook his head, leaving her there and making his way back to the dorms.

She deserved a whole, and she'd already found it in shitty Deku. They'd been dating for more than a month, and the whole class was over the godsdamned moon about it.

So Bakugou returned to his room and pretended not to think about Uraraka Ochako.

—

The next time it rained he watched her from the window. She was glowing and in her element and grinning like All Might as she struggled to lift just a _bit_ more.

And Bakugou, secretly, allowed himself a smile, too.

—

The time after that he made an excuse to be outside—a trip to the supermarket that wasn't entirely necessary as there were only two days left before summer holiday.

She was puking in a bush when he approached, her inevitable limit reached. He had shopping bags in one hand and his umbrella once more hanging lazily above his head as he slowed his walk just a tick in the hope that she'd be up by the time he reached her (because if he stopped while she was puking, it would make it look like he cared, and he was still working rather pathetically to convince himself that he did _not_ ).

She did straighten, pushing wet hair from her face and draining the water bottle in her hand. She wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist and turned, shaking herself and preparing to try again as clear drops ran down her face and trickled from her chin.

Heroes _always_ try again.

It was something All Might liked to tell them when they failed.

And Bakugou, because he was an _idiot_ , fished an apple out of one of the bags.

"Oy, Uraraka," he called, getting her attention and tossing the fruit to her. "Working on an empty stomach won't get you anywhere."

Her eyes widened a bit and the corners of her mouth, which had been pulled down in concentration, tilted upward as she caught it. And, perhaps, she knew him a bit too well, because she didn't thank him, didn't comment on the novelty of the gesture. Instead, she bounced over and peered into his other bags as she took a big, crunchy bite from the apple.

"Are you cooking tonight, Bakugou?" she asked thickly; chewing and swallowing were an afterthought in the wake of her question.

"Haven't decided yet. Does it matter? I don't share."

Uraraka quirked an eyebrow and took a second, pointed, bite from the apple.

"Tch. You know what I mean."

She had a challenging glint in her eyes that made Bakugou's mouth go dry.

"What would it take?" she asked, prodding him in the shoulder in a way that sent crackling electricity through him from the point of contact. "To get you to cook for me?"

He _should_ have told her to fuck off. He should've said that there was nothing she could do, that there wasn't a chance in hell.

But he was out in the rain because she was, and he didn't think he could really deny her anything.

"Stop enough rain that I can walk from here to the dorm without getting wet. When you can do that, I'll consider it."

Uraraka looked from him to the building several meters away. "Who's to say I can't do that right now?"

"Can you?"

"No…"

"Then get to work."

—

He didn't see her during summer holiday, though when it rained, his thoughts drifted to pink cheeks and bright eyes and a strength that could move mountains.

—

Word through the grapevine was, or Tsuyu-told-Yaoyorozu-told-Jiro-told-Kaminari-told-Kirishima (no grapeface involved), that Uraraka and Deku had split.

The way Kirishima brought it up, showing up randomly at the Bakugou house under the pretense of wanting a training partner, made Bakugou wonder just how observant the spiky fucker was.

"You think I care, shit-for-brains?" Bakugou had grunted.

Face and arms visibly hardening, Kirishima smiled. "I think it wouldn't be a bad thing if you did."

—

When they started the second semester, her spark hadn't dimmed. If anything, she threw herself into training with more wild intensity than she had before. Sometimes, during practical lessons, he could hear her muttering things like, "Be dedicated like Deku!"

 _That_ didn't sit particularly well in his stomach.

But she kept trying, kept pushing herself, kept holding back the rain.

And Bakugou kept finding reasons to watch.

—

In December of their second year, Deku noticed.

Noticed the way Bakugou always seemed to 'have plans' when the sky turned grey. Noticed that Bakugou, who notoriously hated the rain, found reasons to go out during storms.

This noticing culminated, as it often did between them, in a messy, all out fight-slash-screaming-match that leveled more than half of Ground Beta and earned them both a bed in Recovery Girl's office and a week of cleaning duty and suspension.

But the truth of all of it was, Deku hadn't been trying to stop him.

" _You're better than me, Kacchan!" Blood and tears ran down his face even as he aimed a roundhouse kick at Bakugou's head. "You're better than me but you're too much of a coward to admit how you feel about her. If you can't do that, you'll never deserve her!"_

 _Bakugou dodged the kick, barely, and pivoted with a right hook at the ready. "The fuck do you know about how I feel?"_

 _Deku, infuriatingly, let himself be hit. He staggered, doubled over, looked up at Bakugou. "It's obvious, isn't it?"_

" _You just think I want whatever you have and you're fucking wrong—"_

" _No." His voice was hoarse, a ragged croak filled with more emotion than Bakugou was willing to acknowledge. "I saw so much in her because of you. The rest of us, even me, sometimes wrote her off, but you never did. You never let her kindness or her size fool you. You...you see her like the hero that she is, and it helped me see that in her too. It didn't work between us because I think I somehow made her feel...less. I think with me she felt like she was always in my shadow. But you...you can share the spotlight with her and neither of you are dimmed because of it."_

" _I don't share—"_

" _Not with most people, no. But her...a true equal...you just build each other up and I'm sorry I ever got in the way of that."_

—

When the rain lashed at the windows of classroom 2-A, Bakugou sometimes thought he could feel her eyes on his neck as he watched it fall.

—

It was a month into their third year when she did it.

The rain started as a languid, icy mist that seeped from the February sky like a dying breath. It quickened, thickened, cold fog condensing into a freezing tempest.

Only two students were crazy enough to brave it. One, training. The other, pretending to do the same ("You should practice in your weakest environments," he'd growled at Kirishima with less conviction than he would've liked).

Bakugou watched her from across the yard as he shivered and tried, at least, to sweat.

Uraraka danced through the downpour like some sort of ninja/ballerina hybrid, her hands moving above her head so fast he couldn't follow them. And the rain parted around her, floated upward as soon as it reached her outstretched padded fingers.

"Bakugou!"

He tore his eyes from the graceful curve of her spine, along the thin, wired muscle of her arms—arms that, despite their size, contained an infinite sort of strength. The past two years at U.A. had melted away her baby fat, leaving her slim and chiseled and full of sharp edges where there used to be roundness, but her voice had never lost its easy warmth. It was a tone that he'd used to hate, until he'd learned how quickly it could become a wicked, challenging battlecry.

His eyes continued upward, passed the rough pads of her fingers (he remembered the feel of them from a few sporadic Quirk combination lessons and the uncanny way she had of touching him at random moments—a hand on his arm to get his attention, both hands on his cheeks as she squished them together in stupid attempts to get him to smile, her fingers woven through his when she thought he was knocked out on a bed in Recovery Girl's office after she'd managed to drop a building on him during an in-class spar).

His eyes, moving upward still, found what she'd been trying to show him.

There, suspended in the air a few meters above her head, was a massive, cohesive bubble of rainwater, and he saw the path to the dorms was sheltered by it.

It was an effort, fighting the grin that threatened to spread across his face.

"The real trick," Uraraka said, smiling triumphantly even as her teeth chattered against each other and she wobbled a bit with the stress of holding up so much. "Was figuring out how to get the new rain falling into the bubble to absorb in a way that keeps my Quirk active on both the new and the old, rather than the new stuff falling straight through."

"It's badass, Uraraka." And it was.

Her eyes, somehow, lit up more than they had already, the stormy sky splashing them in silver.

"Come on then, let's get out of this godsdamned cold before my fingers fall off and I can't hold up my end of the deal."

"You're cooking _tonight_?" She raised her eyebrows as she wrapped her arms around herself and fell into step beside him. They walked under her anti-gravity umbrella, soft light refracting through it and making the space seem a bit surreal.

In spite of the cold, Bakugou's face heated. He tried to play it off, shrugging and shoving his hands in his pockets. "I knew you'd do it eventually, so I've been buying extra."

"Really?" She nudged him with her elbow, her whole face beaming like inside her lived a tiny, brilliant star. 'Here-comes-the-sun,' indeed.

"Why would I lie about dumb shit like that?"

"You wouldn't," she said, still grinning as she pulled open the door to the dorm building. "Your confidence surprised me, though."

"Your regular routine is to practice until you puke and then keep going, dumbass. I'm not going to doubt a work ethic like that."

He wasn't sure if it was embarrassment or the sudden temperature increase upon entering the dorms that caused Uraraka's cheeks to go from pink to red, but either way it made the corner of his traitorous mouth twitch up into a half smile.

She was staring at him, her brown eyes slightly wider than normal as she continued to grin. When she realized this, she shook herself a bit, blushing deeper.

"Uh...I'm going to go find some dry clothes."

"Good idea." His voice was rougher than he intended, and he cleared his throat, nodding toward the giant water bubble outside. "You putting that down?"

"Oh! Right!" she went to the window and pressed the tips of her fingers together. "Release!"

The water crashed to the ground, splashing up against the door to the dorm and forming a small crater-like lake on the grounds. Uraraka winced.

"Oops."

Bakugou shrugged. "Good thing you're not interested in becoming a landscaper."

She laughed. At a stupid joke _he'd_ made. If Kirishima were here he'd probably pinch Bakugou to prove it wasn't a dream. Uraraka bounced off to the girls' staircase and he, hands still in his pockets, trudged up the boys', feeling a warmth burning inside him that could make him sweat in spite of the icy damp of his clothes.

He returned to the kitchen first, his sweatpants and tank top warm and dry against his clammy skin. Uraraka appeared a few moments later as he was digging out a large pot from the back of one of the cabinets. She wore leggings and a sweatshirt—grey with Ryukyu's blue-winged emblem emblazoned across it—and had her hair pulled up in messy twin top knots that came undone a bit as she hoisted herself up to sit on the counter and watch.

There were a few other people throughout the common area—Tsuyu, Deku, and Iida glanced in their direction briefly, sharing secret smiles that would've pissed him off on a different day. They soon gathered up their things and went up the boys' staircase. Yaoyorozu and Jiro were on one of the couches, much too involved in each other to notice what was going on in the kitchen, and Todoroki sat reading a book in the far corner. It was almost like being alone.

"Whatcha making?" Uraraka asked, her eyes following him as he put the pot on the stove and went to the refrigerator.

He shot her a look. "Not telling."

"What if it's something I don't like?"

Blankly, hoping it sounded like a simple, everyday observation, he said, "You like all food."

She smiled, a hint of wickedness in it that caused his heart to stutter.

Before she could say anything, Kirishima came down the stairs, whistling, with Kaminari and Sero in tow. The latter two were arguing,

"Bastion took out White Wolf with his signature Ion Doubletake," Kaminari was saying. "Not the Electron Wave. He debuted that move a year later in his fight with—"

He was cut off as Kirishima, without the faintest hint of subtly, slapped a hand across Kaminari's mouth, jerked his head in Bakugou and Uraraka's direction, and began trying to drag both of them back up the stairs. Sero caught on first, and helped Kirishima carry a confused Kaminari out of sight.

"What was that about?" Uraraka asked, though her cheeks had gone a bit pinker. "Uh...Bakugou? Did the cutting board insult your mom or something?"

He looked down, starting a bit as he realized he was digging the tip of his knife into the aforementioned object. "Idiots," he said, because they _were_. And not just because they were getting heroes mixed up, but he could pretend that was all that irritated him. " _Top Gun_ beat White Wolf. Bastion's suit is modeled after the one Top Gun was wearing in that fight, but Bastion was still in school when White Wolf went down."

A chuckle, a low rumble that rolled out of her like thunder, and then she was laughing, _laughing_ as if all of his knife-wielding hostility was nothing but a gentle patter of rain in the face of her obliterating sunlight.

"What's funny?" he asked, not able to look her full in the face for the brightness, and settled instead on her hands, which clutched her knees in her mirth, as he began chopping carrots.

"I just forget sometimes how much of a dork you are."

"Oy!"

"Not in a bad way!" She pulled her hands from her knees to wave them in front of her face, grinning. "Besides, Kaminari was just wrong on all counts, Bastion debuted the _Electron Wave_ first. He's had more success using the Ion Doubletake, so people think he's always used it, but he actually used the Electron Wave in his very first public fight as a sidekick versus—"

"Whiplash," Bakugou finished with her, focusing intensely on his carrots and swallowing the sudden urge to kiss her or fight her or both."And you call _me_ a dork."

She laughed again, lightly, and the corners of Bakugou's mouth ached from fighting a smile. He dared a glance at her face as he pushed aside the carrots and started on potatoes, and found a soft smile there as she watched him. Her eyes darted away when he met them, her cheeks red again, but the smile remained.

The silence between them was easy, if a bit charged with a host of emotions that Bakugou knew _he_ was feeling, though he couldn't speak for her.

Part of his brain echoed back to him the words he thought the first time he'd seen her practicing in the rain— _you're not a whole. She deserves better_.

The voice in his head that sounded like Deku countered with _Coward._

"What's with the face?" she asked, her voice a bit softer now as Bakugou dumped all the vegetables into the pot, adding broth, herbs, and chunks of beef for the spicy stew he hoped would chase away the wretched cold that still pounded against the windows—more ice than rain now that the sun was setting.

"Face? I always look like this," he said, rearranging his features into his usual scowl as he placed the lid on the pot and went to stand beside her, his back leaning against the counter on which she sat, her knee just grazing the elbow of one of his crossed arms.

"Nuh-uh," she argued, poking him in the shoulder. Finger pad on bare skin sent a shiver through him, though if she noticed, she ignored it. She didn't press the matter, thankfully, and sniffled a bit as she said, "On a scale of one to Bakugou, how spicy is this going to be?"

"I'd call it a solid Uraraka," he said automatically, feeling his face heat up again.

She beamed.

"That's ah—"

"What?" he asked as she stopped mid sentence, a weird, scrunched up look on her face.

"It's ah—ah—ah CHOO!"

The force of it must have activated her Quirk because it sent her to the ceiling, top knots flying out of their ties as she spun wildly heels-over-head-over-heels.

And Bakugou couldn't hold back.

He was laughing. Cackling, _howling_. The doubled over, hands-on-your-knees-just-to-keep-you-upright kind of laughter that he rarely indulged in.

And soon, she was laughing too.

"Get down, dumbass," he said a few moments later, though there was no bite in it at all as his breath was short and his voice didn't sound quite right. "You don't need to be getting sick."

"It'll be my own stupid fault," she said, still chuckling a bit as she released her Quirk and dropped back down to the floor beside him. He pushed her toward the now-empty couches, and she allowed it, plopping down cross legged and grabbing the blanket he shoved at her.

When he returned to the kitchen to check the stew, she watched him over the back of the couch, her chin resting atop the cushion.

"I'm not gonna spit in it, you know."

"Well I wasn't even considering that until _now_ ," she teased, and Bakugou could hear the smile in her voice even as he was turned toward the stove. "But this is a once in a lifetime opportunity! I don't want to waste it."

He didn't respond to that, wondering if he should tell her that he didn't want it to be the only time they did this. He could come up with some excuse, some higher bar she could meet to make this happen again, but he thought she might see through it.

A few more minutes past, and Bakugou deemed dinner ready, spooning the thick stew into two bowls and bringing them to the couch. He sat beside her, mirroring her cross-legged posture, and she un-cocooned herself from the blanket just enough to stick her arms out and take the offered food.

It was quiet, save for the rain on the windows, and dark, save for the light still spilling from the kitchen and the single lamp Jiro and Yaoyorozu had forgotten to turn off when they left. Bakugou worried, a bit, if she could hear the way his heart thundered in his chest as he realized that Todoroki had left too, and they were utterly alone together.

"This smells _amazing_ , Bakugou," Uraraka gushed, taking her spoon and blowing on the first bite. Her lips, pursed and a little chapped, drew Bakugou's gaze, and he was thankful she was too focused on dinner to notice. She popped the spoon into her mouth. "Mmm," she said, her mouth full. "So good."

"Swallow, Uraraka."

She shot him a playful look, but did as he said, smacking her lips a few times as she tested the aftertaste. "'Uraraka Spice Level' is _perfect_. Enough of a kick without ruining the other flavors. How did you know?"

"You're one of the only other people who uses the hot sauce at the condiment bar in Lunch Rush," he said. The truth. "I've seen how much you use."

Her knee brushed his and she hid another smile behind her spoon.

The rain turned to snow, falling thick and fast beyond the window. Uraraka watched it, lost in thought, and Bakugou, for the hundredth time, wondered exactly what had led them to this—which events along the way added up to this uncertainty. Because he knew what _he_ wanted, but he also knew why he didn't deserve it (and that was saying something, as Bakugou had been raised believing that he deserved just about anything he wanted). And Uraraka...was she just being her usual nice self? With the smiles and the laughs and the— _fuck all he hated not understanding something._ He _hated_ not knowing what to do.

He hated that he didn't hate her for making such a mess of him.

"Weird to think this is our last year, huh?" Uraraka said this quietly, eyes suddenly downcast, the manifestation of whatever it was she'd been thinking as she looked out the window.

"Shit, it's not like anyone's dying."

"No...but I mean it's not like we'll all see each other everyday anymore. It's not like we'll all be living together."

"Eh, it'll be fine." This, with more confidence than he felt. He knew _she'd_ be fine, at least. And he would too. He'd be Number Fucking One. He just hoped that alone would make him happy.

"Mostly...mostly I worry that _you_ won't stay in touch."

His heart faltered at that and he tried to keep it from showing on his face. "Me?"

"Yeah. It's not like you really _like_ any of us. Why would you want to spend time with us if you weren't being forced to?" She was looking into the bowl in her lap, one knee bouncing nervously as she chewed on her bottom lip.

He looked at her, a wry smile cracking across his mouth as he waited for her to glance back up. When she did, he took a slow, pointed bite from his stew. "You proved me wrong about sharing. I'm proving you wrong about liking some of you dipshits."

She smiled, but was quiet for a long moment, and Bakugou continued. "Besides, you shouldn't worry about me. There are plenty of better people here you'd be happier hanging out with, even if most of them are shitty extras."

It was her turn to take a pointed bite, using her eyes to gesture to the limited space between them. Her voice was little more than a breath as she said, "I'm _here_ , aren't I?"

Their eyes locked, and such a fire burned in hers that Bakugou wondered if it had been there all along. If he'd missed it by spending so much time avoiding her face for fear of the sun that resided in it. A small, hesitant half-smile tilted at the side of her mouth as she took a shaky breath.

He was blazing, _scorching_ as he had the first time he'd ever fought her, his nerves vibrating and his blood singing at the steel and nerve and challenge that shone from her eyes like a searchlight.

And the uncertainty inside him _snapped._

He grabbed the bowl from her hand, slamming both hers and his onto the coffee table with enough force that he heard one of them crack, but he didn't care because his hands were on her face, pulling it to his. Rough, calloused fingers grazing across pink cheeks. His lips found hers, and a hungry sort of growl ripped out of her throat as she twisted her hands into the front of his tank top, pulling him closer still as she came up on her knees to tower over him. The moan, low and satisfied, that came from his own throat surprised him, and he slipped his hands from her face into her hair, rolling forward onto his own knees as her mouth opened up to him. He pulled her bottom lip between his teeth, sucking on it and caressing it with his tongue. Her resulting gasp brought a grin to his lips.

Her hands moved from the front of his shirt to his shoulders, nails digging into the muscle and holding him in place. He finished with her bottom lip, and she immediately imitated him, slipping his between her small teeth and running her tongue along it.

" _Gods, Uraraka_ ," he groaned against her mouth, and she smiled, biting down a little harder as she did so. Her hands, like they wanted to be everywhere at once, slid into his hair, twisting it between her fingers like she was clutching a lifeline.

They pulled apart enough to breathe, hard and shallow, foreheads still pressed together, and her hands moved to his face, index fingers behind his ears and padded thumbs moving across his cheekbones.

"Don't…" Bakugou started, wanting to say it and not wanting to at the same time as his own hands gripped her wrists, keeping her close. "Don't kiss me just because you're afraid of losing me."

Uraraka's eyes, which had been closed, fluttered open, still burning as they searched his. It surprised him, then, when she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him at every possible point. Her hand on the back of his head guided his face into her shoulder, and he didn't resist.

Her own face was in his neck as she said, "I wouldn't do that to you. Honestly...I—I've kind of wanted to kiss you since first year."

"What?" He pulled back, his hands on both shoulders, holding her in front of him so he could search her brilliantly red face. "What about Deku?"

She shook her head, bit her lip, smiled like a single ray of sunlight through thunder clouds. "It just felt like that was what I was...I don't know. What I was supposed to do, maybe? And it didn't feel _wrong_ , really, liking him. But there was always this sort of nagging at the back of mind...that maybe ...maybe it should've been you. But of course I talked myself out of that because what would _you_ ever see in _me_?"

"What—"

"But then you _did_ see something in me," she said, cutting him off and bringing her eyes back to his. Her hands twisted back into his shirt, both as a means of comfort and as a symbol of her resolve in what she was saying. "You always took me seriously and treated me like an actual rival and that...it inspired me and it made me want to be better, to prove you right. You made me better, because you always believed I had the capacity to be better. And that was just such a...a _positive_ influence for me. It meant more than anything anyone else ever did to help me grow."

There were bright tears in her eyes as she smiled, and Bakugou crushed her back into his chest, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face back in her shoulder because he, for once, was at a complete loss for words. In a few simple statements, she'd destroyed the one argument he'd been having with himself all along. In a few words, she made him _whole._

"Ah—ah—ah CHOO!"

Like a shift in the axis, the room was suddenly tilted and spinning end over end as Uraraka inadvertently sent them both to the ceiling with her second sneeze. Bakugou used a small _pop_ of his Quirk to stop their whirling, his arm around her waist and her fingers in his shirt as they stopped upside down in the air.

He would've laughed, but her lips sealed themselves over his again, clearing his mind like a slate. And it didn't really matter that they were floating upside down in the common area as he wrapped his other arm around her and brushed his tongue across her mouth. It didn't matter that if he wasn't sick already, he probably would be now as she tilted her head back and parted her lips, her own tongue dancing out to war with his.

And, annoyingly, it was like Deku had said. Bakugou and Uraraka weren't dimmed at all by sharing a spotlight. Instead, the sun inside her seemed to multiply in his presence.

And they fucking _glowed_.


End file.
